In the early 1960s, my husband was serving on the submarines based with the British base in Singapore. I realized that many of the young men who came to our house were half the way around the world from their families in the U.K. and it was not easy for them to be so far away from their families during the holidays.
Some of them were not even in their 20s except for one very large Marine. A letter may take two weeks to arrive, so I felt they were very lonely although they tried to be brave and brush it off.
Our first Christmas there, my husband suggested that we invite as many young British servicemen as our house would hold to spend the holidays with us. We were delighted when six accepted the invitation.
As they shyly entered the house, I greeted them and told them to make themselves at home and help themselves to the food or refreshments whenever they wanted and, above all, to enjoy their stay.
We couldn’t find a Christmas tree, so a three-foot imitation tree was decorated with tiny Chinese lanterns and tinsel and placed on a coffee table near the patio door. This wasn’t a great location because the monsoon wind blew it over a few times, and our cat chased a house lizard up the tree and also liked to bat at the dangling decorations. But the tree managed to last until New Year’s.
Christmas dinner was interesting because our traditional Canadian food was not familiar to them. It was fairly soon after the Second World War, so they weren’t exposed to TV programs featuring North American dishes.
Jellied salads were popular at the time, but no one touched it because they thought it was a dessert. They hesitated about the cranberry sauce that my mother mailed to me until they noticed that I was putting it on my turkey and then they asked me to “Pass the jam.”
They weren’t at all sure about the carrot pudding with the hard sauce, or the sweet potato pie.
In the morning, I inquired whether they wanted juice or grapefruit and how they wanted their eggs. One boy softly replied, “Grapefruit … just cut it in half, please … by itself.” This made me wonder what he imagined I was going to do with it if I had my way with it.
They were invited to help themselves to the food in the fridge whenever they wanted a snack. We had a stray kitten at the time, so I thought it was rather endearing when I noticed the big Marine cuddling the kitten under his shirt.
A few days later, when the turkey was reduced to bones, he confessed that he had found the kitten wrapped around the turkey in the fridge and he had been trying to warm it up under his shirt, but he hadn’t said anything about it because he didn’t want to “put anyone off the turkey.”
I can’t remember a more wonderful Christmas. The lads brought such gaiety and fun to us that year when we were also very far from our own home in Canada. They told stories, played music, sang, played games and talked of home. We felt honoured to have them as our guests.
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